HTC’s much teased true flagship smartphone for 2017 has been unveiled today called the HTC U11 which has a body that you can Squeeze with pressure sensitive edges and some other cool tricks as well. The HTC U11 will be the true successor to the HTC 10 from last year.
The main highlight of the HTC U11 is the pressure sensitive edge called Edge Sense. This lets you squeeze the phone in order to execute specific actions. For an example, you can snap a photo just by squeezing the U11’s frame. You can customize how hard you need to squeeze to make something happen. That sounds like a great thing to have. Would love to try it out.
The screen on the U11 is a 5.5-inch QHD Super LCD 5 panel, with Gorilla Glass 5 on top. It comes with IP67 certification for water and dust resistance. That means it’s dust tight and can withstand being immersed in up to 1m of water for up to 30 minutes. It has a glass back too, and its various color versions use that to reflect light in very interesting ways depending on the angle at which it hits.
The Sense Companion first released for the U Ultra will land on the U11 too. This is an app that will give you suggestions based on what you do and your use of the device. As you would expect from an Android smartphone in 2017, the U11 launches with Google Assistant built-in but the cool part is in some markets the handset will also come with Amazon Alexa, so you’ll have plenty of choice with your digital assistant. You can make use of the Amazon Alexa functions even when the phone is sleeping, which is awesome.
The HTC U11 is powered by the Snapdragon 835 chipset. It is paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage in the US, while some international markets will also get a version with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
The main camera is a 12 MP UltraPixel 3-branded unit with 1.4 micron pixel size, f/1.7 aperture, optical image stabilization, a dual-LED flash, and 4K video recording. Slow motion video can be captured in 1080p at 120fps.
The selfie snapper is a 16MP camera. It records 1080p Full HD video, and has a Selfie Panorama mode.
The HTC U11 has a USB Type-C port, Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, NFC, GPS, GLONASS, and Beidou on board, but the 3.5mm headset jack is gone. The handset will come in single-SIM and dual-SIM iterations, with the former having support for 1Gbps 4G LTE, while the latter will only go up to 800Mbps (though note that speeds will be fully dependent on your carrier).
Powering it all is a 3,000 mAh battery, which supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 as well as two different power saving modes.
The U11 runs Android 7.1 Nougat with HTC Sense with a very clean UI. No duplicate apps just like with the HTC U Ultra. That’s great.
The HTC U11 will be available in Amazing Silver, Sapphire Blue, Brilliant Black, Ice White, and Solar Red, and will be available worldwide from May 2017 onward.
Global pricing is set at €749/£649.
Will the HTC U11 Save HTC? Let me know what you think.